


Terrestrial Blues

by Sizzle_It_Up_With_Punka



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Cultural Differences, Culture Shock, F/M, Fundamental misunderstandings of shower apparatus, Hair Kink, Masturbation, Pining, Roommates, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:22:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22010257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sizzle_It_Up_With_Punka/pseuds/Sizzle_It_Up_With_Punka
Summary: Earth culture is strange. Minerva is adjusting. It would perhaps be easier if her old friend/new roommate didn't have such unbearably attractive hair . . .
Relationships: (ostensibly) one-sided Duck/Minerva, Aubrey Little & Duck Newton & Minerva
Comments: 10
Kudos: 130





	Terrestrial Blues

**Author's Note:**

> Once again this is the fault of the Ducknerva Discord. Spooks (spookymodernjazz) is especially to blame. Rhinocio continues to be a god-tier beta to whom I am indebted.

Minerva has watched Earth from a distance for many decades. She has spoken with its people, albeit at a remove that gave her few details of the world itself, except those that Leo Tarkesian and Duck Newton revealed in conversation. She is not exactly ignorant of Earth, but she is far from what she herself would think of as _well-versed_. 

To live here, therefore, is an adjustment. To live anywhere that is so heavily peopled is an adjustment after such a very long time alone (although Leo Tarkesian assures her that Kepler, West Virginia is in fact barely populated, and that “when all this is over” he will take her to the borough of Queens in New York City, New York and show her “what a real town looks like”). To live in the same dwelling as two other people and a domestic animal companion is perhaps even more of an adjustment, although at least when she returns to Duck Newton’s apartment she can cease with maintaining the fiction that she is merely a human visitor from a different region of Earth. 

Some people of Kepler are more willing than others to accept this fiction. After three weeks they are growing used to seeing her in the street, or in the aisles of Leo Tarkesian’s grocery. Some greet her with casual goodwill, eyes skimming with apparent lack of comprehension over the prominent points of her ears and the unearthly markings of her skin. They are perhaps used to ignoring the unusual, living as they have in this town full of the not-quite-human. 

Others, though, seem intent on learning more about Duck Newton’s visiting friend. Minerva is sure that they mean no harm, but to be confronted with questions about herself is . . . well. Before she was the only person left in the world she spent several years as the most notorious among the survivors of Five and many more before that as something akin to a human celebrity. She is not used to speaking with people, and less used to speaking with people who do not know her, and even less used to telling such people untruths about her person. 

It is a particular kind of exhausting. To return to Duck Newton’s apartment after such encounters is reassuring. There, at least, she can count on fewer moments when she is required to explain or prevaricate. 

And it is . . . good. To be living with others again. Strange, without doubt, and at times overwhelming. But she cannot deny the inherent comfort in being close to other living people who exist as something other than phantoms projected into her cobbled-together dwelling. To eat together, to speak together for more than a few hasty minutes of contact – it is a pleasure she never imagined she would experience again. If there are occasionally still moments when she misunderstands Earth culture or becomes momentarily uncomfortable about a difference in personal boundaries, that is to be expected, and Aubrey Little and Duck Newton seem endlessly forgiving of her learning process.

“So,” Aubrey Little says, coming into the living room from the kitchen with a bag of snacks in her hands, ready for their evening ritual of watching broadcast television as a household, “How’d it go in town today?”  


Minerva makes a thoughtful noise, stroking her hand over Sandwich’s brown-and-black patterned fur while the animal makes contented thrumming noises in her lap. “Today I attempted to convince Mrs. Connie Ash that my _glema_ are tattoos.” Minerva says, feeling sheepish. “I am not certain that she believed my explanation.” 

Aubrey smiles brightly. “Next time just tell her it’s a cyberpunk thing.”

Minerva smiles in return. It is hard not to, when she speaks with Aubrey Little; her easy grin and her enthusiasm draw something out of Minerva she has not felt in many years, a sense of ease despite the unfamiliarity of her surroundings here on Earth. “I do not know what that means, Aubrey Little.” 

“Neither will she!” Aubrey replies smugly, flopping into an empty spot on the couch and tearing open the bag of corn-based snack chips, holding them out to offer Minerva access. Minerva takes one and bites into it, savors the mix of too-salty and vaguely spiced flavors, redolent of frying oil and fermented dairy. 

Aubrey smirks around the entire handful of chips she has shoved into her mouth. “Nobody eats Doritos one at a time, Minerva.”

Minerva takes her time, makes sure her mouth is not full before answering. “I do, Aubrey Little.” She pauses, considering for a moment. “Unless you are suggesting this marks me too much as an alien?”

“Nah, she’s just givin’ you a hard time.” Duck Newton says easily as he takes the seat on Minerva’s other side and cracks open the seal on a can of soda. He reaches across Minerva to delve into the bag, and his long, brown, slightly-curly hair brushes her shoulder as he does so. Minerva tries not to make it obvious, but her breath catches in her throat as Duck snags a single Dorito himself, leans back into his own space, and crunches it pointedly at Aubrey.

Aubrey Little rolls her eyes. “I’m not changing my mind on this.” 

Minerva forces herself to stop thinking about the brush of hair ( _Extravagant, brazenly long hair!_ ) against the bare skin of her shoulder. She turns to Aubrey instead. “Should I also be prepared to explain my method of eating Nacho Cheese Doritos to the people of Kepler, Aubrey Little?”

Movement catches her eye and she turns to watch as Duck rakes his fingers along his scalp, scrubbing them back and forth thoroughly before letting his hand fall. His hair is rumpled from the action, a few locks falling over his forehead and into his eyes. “Hey, now, Minerva, don’t worry too much about that. You been doin’ just fine with fitting in. Uh, mostly.” 

Minerva smiles tightly and averts her eyes, using the opening sequence of _The Voice_ as an excuse to look away from his overtly tousled appearance. “Thank you, Duck Newton. That strikes me as a half-truth, but it is nevertheless kind of you to say.” 

She wonders if the warmth she feels in her cheeks and forehead is evident to her human compatriots, and hopes very much that it is not. 

This is a new world, she reminds herself as Coach Adam Levine begins speaking. Things do not have the same meaning here that they did on Five. For example: Duck Newton’s hair touches his shoulders, but this does not seem to strike anyone but her as a sign of extreme sexual desirability. He combs and maintains it but sometimes it becomes disarrayed, and the fact that he does not rush to set it right before speaking to her is merely due to a different set of social customs. It does not have the connotations it would have back home. He does not mean to signal that he is eager to engage in activities that would disarray it further. Certainly he is not trying to say that he would be eager to engage in them with her, specifically. 

She is a fool, one who has been alone for far too long and who must now re-learn how to exist in the company of other people. It would be easier if the culture of these people did not vary from her own in such subtle and treacherous ways, but Minerva is well aware that her own actions are what took her culture away from the universe forever. If now she finds herself a stranger among strangers, she has nobody but herself to blame. She will adjust, and she will learn the strictures of this world’s culture, and she will count herself fortunate to have any chance at readjusting to the physical companionship of others. Most of all, she will stop letting her gaze linger so long on Duck Newton’s tousled hair and the shadow of stubble along his jaw. 

When The Voice is finished broadcasting Minerva goes out to take over the evening patrol from Leo Tarkesian. She paces the darkened streets of Kepler, West Virginia, keeping well clear of any of the places where the occupying forces of the American federal government are known to congregate. All is quiet in town, lights shining from dwellings and people easily glimpsed though windows.

From there she ranges through the stretch of the Monongahela National Forest that surrounds the town, scanning the darkness for threats and finding none there. The forest may be her favorite place on Earth so far, wild and richly scented and alive with night sounds. She moves through the trees silently enough that she encounters several of the creatures who call the forest home, deer on their delicate legs and night birds with wide, pale eyes. She sees nothing else, nothing that could be considered a threat to the safety of Kepler or its people. 

Minerva returns home, retracing her steps until she reaches the apartment building. Barclay is sitting on the front porch stoop, arms folded over his knees, gazing with distant sadness off towards the place where Amnesty Lodge is located, but he rouses himself and pastes a welcoming smile on when Minerva approaches. They exchange polite greetings – Minerva does not know him well yet, and Duck Newton has informed her that to comment upon the emotional troubles of a mere acquaintance is considered invasive here on Earth. She has not yet discovered what the threshold of time knowing a person is when one may broach such subjects, and seeing that the troubled expression is still flickering behind Barclay’s eyes she resolves that tomorrow morning she will get Duck Newton to give her a concrete answer regarding that timeframe. Failing that, she will set it at four weeks, which seems eminently reasonable to her. 

Duck Newton’s bedroom door is closed when she arrives in the apartment, signaling that he has gone to bed. Sandwich _mrowrs_ and winds himself around her ankles and Minerva bends to lavish the creature with well-deserved attention, praising him for being such a good and attentive watch-animal. 

Minerva is tired. It was a long evening, though nothing appeared to challenge her during her patrol. She knows from long experience that tension does not require the appearance of a real challenger, that the mere act of remaining alert when patrolling a vast emptiness is enough to leave the body tight as a strung wire. To continue in such a manner would be foolhardy; it is as essential for a warrior to relax as it is for her to be alert, and so Minerva retrieves a clean change of clothing from the store of garments she has been slowly collecting and goes to take a shower.

Aubrey Little is sprawled across the couch on her back, a tattered paperback book in one hand, and she raises the other hand in lazy salute as Minerva crosses the room on the way to the shared washroom. Minerva returns the gesture with a nod, enters the small tiled room and locks the door behind her. This, Aubrey Little has explained gently, is considered common courtesy for Earth people who live in shared quarters, although restricting one’s companions in their access to the other facilities in the room while she is cleaning herself seems inherently discourteous to Minerva. This is why she usually waits until the apartment is otherwise unoccupied to avail herself of the shower.

Minerva turns the water on to allow it to grow warm and then strips out of her clothes, folding them before placing them in the basket of dirty laundry in one corner. Then she steps into the glassed-in space and pulls it closed, drawing in a long, satisfied breath as the warm water hits her.

She closes her eyes and runs her palms down her sides, letting her mind go blank as she relishes the sensation of water against her skin, the feeling of the muscle under her fingertips. Five was a dry world, and an apparatus like this – unlimited water, hot and clean, billowing steam into the confines of the glass cubicle – would have been an unimaginable invention there. Even in the long loneliness when she was the only living thing making demands on the water supply it would never have occurred to her to construct or use such a creation. 

But here on the watery world she now calls home it is commonplace, a luxury she can indulge whenever she desires, and she has made thorough use of it. It is a delight to be wet and clean and warm at the touch of a few simple controls. There is a further delight in using the _massaging shower head_ device, which can be held in the hand and adjusted to many different settings of pressure and pulse. The intended application of this item was immediately apparent to her, but in addition to being an excellent aid to self-pleasure it has further utility in easing the tightness of muscles that are stiff or strained from effort, and for the moment it is this use she puts it to. She turns around and places her palms flat against the shower wall, lets the warm pulses of water unlock the knots between her shoulder blades and spine and wash the tension down the drain in the center of the tiled floor. 

When she feels the last of the leftover strain from the evening’s patrol leave her shoulders she shifts her position. Minerva leans back against the water-warmed surface of the wall and breathes deeply, drawing humid air into her lungs, relishing in the comforting heaviness of it. How clever of humankind to create such a pleasant invention, she thinks again, a space uniquely suited to ridding oneself of both the day’s accumulated dust and oil and the tension gathered in the body. They are an ingenious species. 

She slips her hand between her thighs and presses her fingertips against the tender spots on either side of her still-hidden entrance, a steady pressure that sends a slow wave of sensation rolling through her pelvis and up into her spine. When it’s clear the glands there have started their response phase, she draws the fingers of that hand away slowly, trailing across the ridged place between her legs and then up along her abdomen and over one hip, tracing scars and luminous blue _glema_ that glow gradually brighter as she grows more aroused. The ones that line her inner thighs gleam and tingle, signaling for nobody. 

Minerva cups one breast and squeezes it gently, imagining someone else’s hands accompanying her own, perhaps even nudging them away to take charge of the task of caressing her. She fought away thoughts of such imagined companions for a long time, once, thinking it an act of sacrilege, a dishonor to the dead, but she was alone for a very long time in the ruins of Five and she has learned to pick her battles.

She compromises, now. She still refuses after all this time to think of any specific lover; she picks and chooses instead, pieces together a phantom out of one person’s clever fingers and another’s shimmering skin and a third’s gentle mouth, and tousled brown hair curling around the shell of a softly rounded ear . . . 

_Oh._ Minerva sighs and slides her palm over the soft flesh of her belly, feels the warm pulse of water rouse sensations where it falls across her torso. Her body is softening now, opening itself up, and she strokes the tips of her fingers slowly over ridges of cartilage and the folds of tender flesh that are revealing themselves now that her arousal is in full swing. 

Minerva’s breath quickens and her skin prickles with pleasure at the touch, and she closes her eyes, lets the thrum of water set the pace her fingers keep against her body.

What would it be like to let someone else learn her body again after all this time? What would a human’s touch be like, she wonders, trailing her fingertips to press against the most sensitive places, ghosting the other hand along the glowing markings on her torso to stir near-electric feeling there. Would a human know to touch the luminous places, as she does? Would they learn by doing? 

Minerva reaches up and takes hold of the slick metal wand of the shower apparatus, frees it from its mounting and maneuvers it so that the pulsing water is aimed between her legs, a steady drumbeat of sensation that adds to the practiced motion of her fingers. 

Would hands like Duck Newton’s hands be tentative and tender, or would they press and stroke and knead with easy certainty the first time they met her flesh? She draws in a long, unsteady breath, imagining touches from fingers roughened by hard work out-of-doors, calluses dragging along her most intimate places.

Would an alien know how to use their mouth against her? Or would she have to guide them with words and gestures, with her hands in their hair? She would hold his head gently but steady, relishing the feeling of the hair between her fingers while his lips and tongue found the perfect spots . . .

The thought sends lust arcing through her like the blow of a sword, swift and lethal, and she gasps and bucks her hips up against her hand, slipping two of her fingers into herself and crooking them to push up into the sweet spot of perfect sensation. Minerva pictures her fingers tightened in brown curls of soft, sleek hair, the faint scratch of stubble against the tender _glema_ of her inner thighs. She has never experienced such a sensation, but she can only imagine it would be _overwhelming_ , vivid and sharp and sweet. 

Minerva braces herself against the wall, legs shaking, breath coming in sharp, short gasps as the matched rhythm of pulsing water and thrusting fingers drives her up to the edge and then over. She rolls her head back and trills as she climaxes, the sound as liquid as the water falling around her, fingers rocking as she rides out the release. 

Minerva is just pulling her fingers away from herself when there is a knock on the door, and her chest catches a bit as Duck Newton’s voice breaks in through the cloud of steam and the hazy aftermath of her orgasm. 

“Minerva?” His voice is full of concern, the last syllable of her name catching on his worry. “Hey, you okay in there? There was uh, there was a sound . . .”

Minerva opens her eyes, breath still a little unsteady, and moves the water wand away from her body. Sound? Of course there was a sound. Does he not – ? Is it – ? 

“You do not need to be concerned, Duck Newton.” She says after a long moment of intense self-doubt. She tries not to think about how concern wrinkles his forehead, the soft creases at the edges of his eyes, how his calloused hands would catch her own between them, how his teeth worry at the fullness of his bottom lip . . .

She groans, switches her attention to willing down the arousal still bubbling through her system. It typically takes a moment for the chemical rush of post-climax to recede, and anyone from Five would have given her time after hearing a trill to ask her any questions, but such nuance is clearly lost on her human companion ( _What kind of sounds do they make when they climax?_ She pushes the thought away). 

“You sure?” He does not sound convinced. Minerva breathes deeply and calls on concentration exercises she has not needed to use in a very long time. It has been decades since there was anyone else around during the refractory period. Since there was anyone else around at all.

“It was merely a noise of climax, Duck Newton.” She says at last, once her breath has evened itself out. “Do you need to use the washroom facilities?”

There is a distinct noise outside the door. It sounds very much as if someone has stepped on Sandwich the cat’s tail, and it is followed by swearing and panicked words from Duck Newton. 

“Goddamnit cat – uh. Uh, _fuck_. No, no that’s okay, you just . . .” The voice recedes rapidly. Aubrey Little says something indistinct in the background. “Fuck. Forget it, forget I asked, forget it . . .”

Minerva frowns, replacing the shower wand in its fitting. The response is . . . she is not sure what it is she expected, but it was not that. She did not mean to cause Duck Newton discomfort with what she thought was a straightforward answer to his question. Which means she has yet again slipped in her understanding of his cultural expectations, no doubt.

Minerva sighs and shuts off the water, steps out of the shower cubicle and dries herself off with quick, businesslike motions before hanging the towel up to dry. She pulls on her fresh clothing (casual nudity, even among close associates, is apparently unacceptable here). 

When she steps out of the bathroom Aubrey Little is sitting bolt upright on the couch, one leg crossed over the other with her hands clasping her knees. She looks by turns fascinated and absolutely delighted.

Duck Newton is slumped over in the space next to her with one hand covering his eyes. Sandwich, no doubt mortally offended by having been trodden upon, has retreated to the top of the bookshelf in one corner. 

Minerva looks between Aubrey and Duck. Duck is turning an alarming shade of scarlet, and were she not becoming accustomed to her Chosen One's propensity for embarrassment she would be concerned that he was choking on something. As it is, she thinks she can infer what the issue is from the context clues of her conversation and Duck’s reaction.

"Is masturbation not common practice on Earth, Aubrey Little?"

Duck makes a strangled noise. Aubrey throws her head back and laughs, and for a moment Minerva is unsure what she is laughing about – Duck's reaction, the audacity of Minerva's question, or Minerva's ignorance. She tries not to be stung by the notion of it being the latter. 

Aubrey wipes at her eyes, still giggling. "No, Minerva, it's . . . listen, I mean, some people are more uptight than others – "

"I'm dead." Duck announces, burying his face in a sofa pillow. "Y'all go on ahead and bury me 'cause I'm fuckin' dead."

Aubrey rolls her eyes at him. "It's common practice, most people just don't talk about it in front of other people?"

“Ah, I see.” Minerva nods, adding that information to her gathering picture of the local culture. Her heart drops to realize that she’s made what seems to be a truly grievous misstep in etiquette. “Thank you, Aubrey Little. Duck Newton, I apologize that my ignorance of this fact led me to make you uncomfortable.” 

Duck raises his head from the cushion. His hair is in serious disarray now, and Minerva’s chest clenches a little. So much she is missing because she was not born here, raised here. So much she is layering over this place and these people without even realizing she has done so. 

Duck Newton clears his throat and smooths his hair down with his palms. It brushes the collar of his worn sleeping shirt and curls invitingly around his ears. “Aw, Minerva. Don’t worry about it, no way you coulda known.”

The blush has receded a bit but it still reddens his cheeks and tinges his ears at the tips, and such coloration would mean _I am not displeased to be in your company_ if Minerva could fall back on her instincts in this case, but she obviously cannot. 

She will do better. She will lean into the things she knows how to do well – vigilance and training and battle – and she will be more assiduously attentive in her study of the ways of this world. She will learn what she should and should not say.

“Nevertheless,” she says stiffly, “I will not let it happen again.”

Aubrey’s expression softens, and she hops up and crosses the room to put her arms around Minerva’s shoulders in a quick, awkward hug. “Hey,” she says, “Cut yourself some slack, you know? You’re doing the best you can.” 

“That is certainly true, Aubrey Little.” And it is. Minerva is _always_ doing her best. Anything else is entirely unacceptable.

Aubrey smiles, bright as the flames she can summon, and Minerva cannot help but be soothed as she always is by the younger woman’s presence. “Besides. Duck could use someone to fluster him once in a while. It’s good for him.” 

“Fuck you, Lady Flame,” Duck Newton says, but it’s entirely fond (because this is a thing one can do with the local language, as Leo Tarkesian taught her many years ago), and he stands and crosses the room and clasps Minerva’s shoulder in a callused hand. 

“Don’t go changin’ too much on my account, Minerva,” he says, and perhaps she does not yet understand every nuance of human speech or body language or culture, but there is no mistaking the warmth of his affection. “I’ll survive.” 

She feels herself relax once more, feels a smile tug at the corner of her mouth, and she claps a hand between his shoulder blades hard enough for the thumping sound to echo a little. Duck Newton _oofs_.

“If I have anything to say about it, of course you will, my Chosen warrior,” she says, and the awkwardness of the earlier moment dissolves as Aubrey laughs and Duck – a little winded – joins in. 

This place is not Five. Cannot ever be Five. And the people of this place require _effort_ to understand. But Minerva is well acquainted with effort. And if she does not have to undertake that effort alone?

That is more than she ever expected, and more than she can deserve, and she will make certain she earns it.


End file.
